I've noticed that the excellent Sony BDP-S5000ES is being heavily discounted lately, available new between 400 and 500 dollars. I'd wager this would be an excellent model to use with this preamp; it has discrete outputs for all channels that are purported to sound really really good, close in quality to its sister ES SACD player, which I have and adore the sound of.. Picture quality is also reported to be excellent, especially DVD upscaled image. I'll have one here on Monday, though I only use 2 channel audio for video, and can't comment on the surround sound.

I sprang for this because it matches the looks (and shares important design characteristics) with my Sony SCD-XA5400ES SACD player, and I couldn't resist the price (this started out as a 2000 dollar player). I'll move my current Sony BDP-S2000ES into my bedroom system where I know it will shine as both a cd and video source.

Just thought it would be a good price point for someone interested in quality audio with great picture, and not needing to stream movies, etc.

Here's the deal with Sony: Early this year Sony discontinued selling their ES series from any dealer over the internet. It's all brick and mortar and maybe SonyStyle.com, which shows this model as discontinued. Yes it has been discontinued. I've been told that the warranty is good if its new and in the box and has a warranty card.

So yes, you're not going to get this price from a store if they have some in stock. To me the price is worth the risk. I've had my SACD player half way through the warranty period right now with not one lick of a problem, not even a hint. I expect the same with this player, I'm going to send off the warranty card and enjoy it.

Sony replaced this model in the ES series sort of with one half the price in a plastic case and reportedly with a much inferior analog output stage. There doesn't seem to be plans to put out a new one in a metal case, heavily built like this and with this sort of attention to quality playback. So I'm grabbing this model because in my opinion that's the way to go with players, and those type of players are generally more expensive even than the list price of these players.